Sensex surges 173 points

The markets, after a soft start, soon jumped into the positive terrain and gained from strength-to-strength as the day progressed.

Taking cues from the Chinese markets, the Metal stocks led the gains followed by the banks.

The IT and realty stocks were also not left far behind.

The Sensex opened at 17,403, and touched a low of 17,396 in opening trades. The index, thereafter, jumped into the positive zone and refused to look back.

As the Asian markets recovered led by Shanghai, the European markets too perked up in opening trades. Further cues from the US futures were enough to instill confidence in world markets.

The Shanghai index ended with a gain of almost 2% today. The Hang Seng and Nikkei also moved up 1.2% and 0.8%, respectively.

The European markets too were trading with gains in excess of 1% each. The Dow futures indicated at least 70-odd points jump at the start for the index.

Bank home, the Sensex rallied to a high of 17,643, and finally settled with a gain of 173 points at 17,614.

The NSE Nifty moved up 53 points to 5,289.

The BSE Metal index surged 1.9% to 14,595. The Bankex rallied 1.7% to 10,883, and the

IT index jumped 1.7% to 5,347.

The market breadth was fairly positive - out of 3,004 stocks traded on the BSE, 1,616 advanced and 1,236 declined today.

INDEX MOVERS. . .

Mahindra & Mahindra, TCS and HDFC Bank rallied around 2.5% each to RS 627, Rs 758 and Rs 1,959, respectively.

Jindal Steel and ICICI Bank advanced over 2% each to Rs 629 and Rs 859, respectively.

SBI, Tata Steel, Wipro, Infosys, Sterlite, Bharti Airtel and Hindalco were the other prominent gainers.

. . .AND THE SHAKERS

Reliance Communications slipped nearly 2% to Rs 182.

Jaiprakash Associates, ACC and Hero Honda were down around 1% each.

SECTOR-WISE MOVERS & SHAKERS

JSW Steel surged 4.7% to Rs 1,076 among the metal space. It was followed by Sesa Goa, Welcorp, SAIL and Jindal Saw. Nalco was the sole loser.

Among the banking space, Federal Bank soared over 4% to Rs 345. Yes Bank, Bank of India, IDBI Bank, Indusind Bank and Axis Bank were the other major gainers.

Rolta jumped over 4% to Rs 174. Oracle Finance also advanced over 1% from the mid-cap IT space.

VALUE & VOLUME TOPPERS

SpiceJet topped the value chart on the BSE with a turnover of Rs 184.40 crore followed by Jindal Cotex (Rs 144.40 crore), Aban Offshore (Rs 82 crore), Bharti Airtel (Rs 81 crore) and SBI (Rs 73.60 crore).

SpiceJet, thanks to the block deals, also led the volume charts on the BSE with trades of around 34.23 million shares. It was followed by FCS Software (29.72 million), Jindal Cotex (12.27 million), Karuturi Global (12.05 million) and IFCI (7.60 million).